1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to a communication system and, more specifically, to techniques for reducing buffer overflow in a communication system.
2. Related Art
In emerging wireless communication systems, such as third generation partnership project long-term evolution (3GPP LTE) systems, downlink rates are generally an order of magnitude faster than legacy wireless communication systems. In a number of different wireless communication systems, data transferred from a serving base station (BS) to user equipment (or a subscriber station (SS)) is buffered in a memory of the SS prior to further processing of the data. In various situations, data stored in a buffer (of an SS) may overflow before further processing of the buffered data is initiated.
A number of different conventional approaches may be employed to reduce buffer overflow occurrences in an SS. For example, a buffer size for an SS may be selected to be a relatively large size. Unfortunately, increasing a buffer size of an SS increases a cost of the SS and generally reduces marketplace competitiveness of the SS. As another example, a maximum downlink rate of an SS may be reduced (e.g., by lowering a maximum downlink rate capability parameter in an SS capability class in an LTE compliant SS). However, reducing a maximum downlink rate of an SS also generally reduces marketplace competitiveness of the SS and limits performance of the SS. As another example, conventional flow control may be employed to reduce buffer overflow occurrences in an SS. However, reducing buffer overflow occurrences in an SS using conventional flow control may require substantially immediate flow control signaling by the SS upon initial receipt of data (to reduce a data transmission rate of a serving BS). Unfortunately, flow control signaling by an SS may be subject to delays in obtaining an uplink channel and, as such, any reduction in flow rate attributable to the flow control signaling may not prevent buffer overflow in the SS.